Ever After
by A. X. Zanier
Summary: It took years but they've come up with a plan to stop Thanos. Get to the stones first.


A/N: I went for a run yesterday. A dumb idea I know, what the hell is a nerd doing exercising, right? Well, this hell bunny viciously attacked and forced me to write it.

This is a huge what if related to Avengers 4. So spoilers? It is also AU as it came prepackaged in my _expendable_ universe.

If on the _**extremely**_ off chance I've guessed correctly with any aspect of this story, I'm sorry.

You can blame this story on the song _Ever After_ by Marianas Trench which I ended up listening to on repeat as I fleshed it out.

.

 _Ever After_

 _._

We stepped out of the vortex onto a world shrouded in near darkness thanks to what seemed to be a permanent eclipse.

Thompkins pulled out her tablet. "We're on target. Vormir."

"Where is easy. When is the hard part," the Captain reminded without a trace of amusement in his voice.

"Well, I'm picking up the energy signature of a Stone, so it's looking like we got here first."

"Which way?" he asked.

"That way would be my guess," I told him as I gestured towards the lone mountain in the area. I glanced over at Thompkins who nodded in agreement. "Captain?"

"Double time."

Double time for us was still slow for him, but he stayed to our rear, watching our backs as we made our way towards the goal. A goal that had taken years to get to. The plan an audacious one to say the least if simple on the surface.

Get the Stones before Thanos.

Not an impossible task by any means, but had required the invention of several new technologies to have even the slightest chance of success. We'd split up into teams, each one going after a particular stone. The Captain had been picked to retrieve the Soul Stone.

Thor had the ability to get us to any planet in the Nine Realms, but he could not affect time, so we'd used the vortex tech instead. Make the jump in one step instead of two. All the testing had proved them to be fairly accurate, although the further the distance, time, space or both, caused the inaccuracies to mount near exponentially. The math had to be perfect.

Luckily, I excelled at math.

As we jogged to the mountain I worked on the math to get us back to the planned meeting point. Discussion between the others nonexistent as we moved. Their focus on getting to the target and making certain there would be no surprises. We made decent time and reached our goal with no issues. We took a moment to regroup then began the climb to the whatever awaited us at the top.

Nothing unusual happened during the climb upward, which I found decidedly odd. The Captain even more so as he made his way to the front, eyes wary and scanning everything for the slightest hint of trouble.

He sensed something ahead, signaling us to halt just prior to a dark mist seemingly forming out of the air itself. I went to one knee, weapon coming up to my shoulder as my team took up flanking positions to either side of the narrow tunnel.

A voice oozed out of the mist, a voice that oddly enough had a decidedly German accent.

"Welcome Captain Rogers, son of Joseph." The figure seemed to tip his head to the side as if contemplating his next words with care. "Your presence is unexpected."

The Captain tensed beside me. "You know me?" His polite tone had a layer of demand behind it.

"It is my curse to know all who journey here."

"What the hell?" I muttered under my breath, the gun not wavering and prepared to end the... creature before us if it made even the hint of a threat.

"Myla MacMillion, daughter of Xavier, you are also welcome here."

"Not sure I want to be," I responded, not overly thrilled the creature had taken note of my presence. Or that it knew my real name. I didn't exactly advertise that information.

The creature chuckled, the sound rueful to my ears. "You are far wiser than you realize.

"Where's the Soul Stone?" the Captain asked, clearly to derail any further conversation between the two of us.

"You should know... it extracts a terrible price." The creature seemed to sound truly sympathetic.

The Caption glanced back at me for an instant, his shoulders squaring as he turned back to reply, "I am prepared."

The creature shook it's not fully formed head. "We all think that at first. We are all wrong." The amorphous figure settled onto the stone and became solid, the face in the hood resembling that of a red-tinted skull.

I stared in surprise for a second and then firmed up my aim, not bothering with a torso shot any longer. No, I placed that little green dot right in the center of the forehead prepared to finish him off if he even blinked funny. "Captain?"

"Schmidt," he spat the word as if it tasted bad.

"Yes, Captain, I did not die as expected when the Tesseract overloaded. Instead, it cast me out, banished me here. Guiding others to a treasure I cannot possess." He turned, obviously unconcerned at our willingness to shoot him.

"Come. What you seek is this way." He walked towards the dim daylight that could be seen ahead.

We followed him out onto an open area high enough up that it seemed the whole of this dark world spread before us. Steve led the way, closest to Schmidt. I turned to my team. "Guard the exit." They took up station to either side, both of them understanding exactly who might show up at any moment. They would not be able to defeat Thanos in a fair fight, but they could warn us of his approach.

"We'll see an energy spike if he arrives anywhere on this side of the planet."

I nodded then trotted to join Steve in the middle of what looked like an oversized sacrificial altar. Carvings in the rock, the two stone pillars that stood impossibly tall above us, the way the wind somehow bypassed the entire area even though we were thousands of feet up. I walked towards the edge and glanced down, the religious theme continuing on the ground far below given the large circle and other markings I could see from this elevation.

"What you seek lies before you. As does what you fear."

The Captain moved forward to join me, also glancing down at the ground below for a moment before turning back to Schmidt. "What is this?"

"The price. Soul holds a special place among the Infinity Stones. You might say it has a certain wisdom."

The Captain huffed out a breath of irritation, not liking the games Schmidt seemed to be playing. He wanted answers, not cryptic obfuscation. "Just tell me what it needs."

"To ensure that whoever possesses it... Understands its power... The stone demands a sacrifice."

"Of what?" The Captain all but ordered, his rare impatience showing. He took a single step towards Schmidt who didn't even flinch. Even though The Captain had already defeated him once he had no fear of him and that caused a frisson of worry to slither down my spine.

"In order to take the stone, you must lose that which you love. A soul… For a soul."

And the Captain, my Captain instantly understood the meaning. "No. I won't."

"Then the Stone shall remain here until the price is paid," Schmidt explained with a casual wave of his hand. "Apparently the great Captain America no longer has the resolve to make a sacrifice when needed."

I could hear Cap's teeth grind together, a growl of loathing of the man before him in his chest.

Still standing a few feet behind him, I began to strip off my gear. Schmidt's eerie gaze turned in my direction. "As I said, wiser than you realized."

The Captain spun around. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Captain..." I shook my head at him. "You know exactly what I'm doing." I briefly met the eyes of my teammates, both of them with wide eyes but stoic expressions. They understood. _We_ understood. And had the moment we'd been assigned to this particular op.

The Captain strode over to me and placed his hands firmly on my shoulders. "No. I won't let you do this."

I leaned around him. "Can I just jump off? Will that fulfill the requirements?"

Schmidt shook his head. " _He_ must make the sacrifice, no matter how willing you may be."

The Captain's grip tightened for an instant. "I'll order you to stand down."

I smiled up at him. "And I'll just ignore you."

He spun about to glare at Schmidt. "I don't know what game you're playing, but if this is you are trying to get even with me..."

"It is no game, Captain. I did not make these requirements, the Soul Stone does. If you do not wish to possess it you may simply leave."

My Captain's shoulders sagged for a long moment before he turned back to me. "Then I'll do it. You can claim the Stone."

I reached up and set a hand against his cheek. "Ah, Steve, you know that won't work. Even if I were to retrieve it I am not strong enough to control it. You are."

He took a sudden step back. "You knew this would happen. You knew what the price would be."

I nodded slowly. "I spoke with Nebula and we worked it out. It was a guess, admittedly, but a sound one."

"And you volunteered for this op."

"Of course I did." I peeled off the vortex controller, holding up to my team before placing it atop my pile of belongings. "Programmed for the next trip, you just need to sync them." Then I slowly backed towards the edge. "Steve, this is my job. Expendable, remember?"

He gave a choking laugh, his eyes pained. "I can't, Myls." He spun towards Schmidt. "Haven't I sacrificed enough in my life?"

Schmidt cocked his head, no trace of humor anywhere in his mien and said, "Apparently not, Captain."

"Fuck," he swore, pulling a surprised snort from me.

"Steve, we're running out of time here. Th- _He_ could show up at any moment. Don't tell me we went through all of this to fail." A bit of button pushing, but I had to get him to see this had always been the only viable option.

"There are other Stones, we just-"

I shook my head. "No. We cannot take any chances. Every Stone in our possession is one less he can use. And if we get them all we can stop him cold. Save everyone." I stepped forward to meet him, took both his hands into my own. "And that's the job."

"You _want_ to die?"

"No. Hell no. And I don't want to leave you, but it if saves everyone else?" I had to get through to him, had to make him see this option, while horrible, remained the only one.

"This is why they chose me for the Soul Stone. I'm the only one who might be willing to make this particular sacrifice."

"Yeah," I agreed. "We all know you'd be willing to jump on a grenade to save others, but can you let someone else do it for you? Can you watch another jump on that proverbial grenade?"

"You seem to think so," he groused, not happy with my logic.

"Steve, in any given situation I trust you do do the right thing. What is the right thing now?"

He frowned deeply as tears began to form in the corner of his eyes. "I don't want to lose you too."

He'd gone from won't to can't to don't, which meant he knew there were no other options for success in this moment. He began to pull his vortex controller off. "Take this at least, you might-"

I set my hand atop his to stop him. "Where I'm going I won't be in need of it."

He changed his grip so that he held my hand in both of his. "Myla-"

"Hey, I went into this with my eyes wide open. You just make damn fucking sure we win. Got me." And I had. I'd had a few passing moments of doubt and fear on the way here, but in the end, a certainty had washed across me. Driving away any emotion other than the love for the man before me. "Guess we're about to find out if what you feel for me is real."

His head snapped up, a momentary anger and astonishment upon his handsome features. "God, I hate you so much sometimes."

I grinned. "I know." I began to slowly back up, him not resisting at all until I stood at the edge of the precipice, a featherlight breeze causing the hairs that had escaped their tight confinement to drift lazily upward about me. "Steve-"

"Marry me," he suddenly blurted out. "I should have asked ages ago, but-"

"But the whole saving the world thing got in the way. We were together, that's all that mattered to me." The truth and nothing but. Still, he waited there, waiting for a response to a question that I had decided an answer to a long time ago, but at this moment I gave the only one that I could. "Yes."

He pulled me in for a kiss. A real one that normally would have had my team hooting and whistling given public displays between us had always been rare. When we broke apart, that commitment made in our hearts if not before friends and family, he set his forehead against mine. "I love you."

"I love you."

And then he pushed.

Not that it took much, I'd wiggled backward far enough that it would take no more than the slightest of touches for me to go over the side. I kept my eyes open, watching him grow smaller and smaller as the distance between us increased, the air flowing past finally pulling my hair free to create a banner about my head.

When I knew the ground neared, I'd been able to calculate the distance on my first look down and had easily kept track as I fell, I closed my eyes.

An instant of pain and then... nothing.

Or maybe not nothing.

I found myself surrounded by an orange glow. An endless expanse of water at my feet that came from nowhere and went nowhere. I had suspected that it had not been death I'd been going to, because if this were the true afterlife then... boring.

The power of the Soul Stone infused this place and, I realized, me.

I found myself wearing a hospital gown and robe that I recognized, a large window that showed nothing more than more of the orange-tinted water before me. I tipped my head as I tried to process the meaning of it. In my mind Steve stood before that window, his back to me, the sunlight leaking in and creating a golden halo out of his hair.

The moment the one when he'd discovered for himself that the women he'd had a crush on had become something more to him. That he had if only subconsciously, decided to love me.

Interesting that the Stone had chosen his moment and not mine, though I supposed in some ways it made sense as he had become the wielder. I had simply been the needed sacrifice.

Time passed, though I knew not how much. It could have been mere seconds or lifetimes as I had no way to judge. My mortal time-sense not able to comprehend existence within the Stone, it's power far, far greater than anyone outside of it could possibly understand.

Then, between one moment and the next, I felt a new presence. I turned to see Steve standing before that window. Not like in my memory though. Now he faced me. The clothes he wore ones I did not recognize even though I still wore the gown and robe, unable to change a thing about myself, even though I did have some free will if only in my mind.

My sacrifice had a purpose behind it.

A pressure built up inside me. Demanding I speak though I had no idea what words might come from me.

"Myls?" Steve asked, not in confusion, but as if to confirm that what he saw was real.

"Did you do it?" The question not mine, though it came from my throat and could be heard in my voice.

"Yes," he answered, straightening. Pain and pride both in that single word.

"What did it cost?"

"Nothing I wasn't willing to give."

I blinked, or the Soul Stone blinked as if confused by that response.

Then, much to my shock, he strode forward, wrapped his arms about me, and kissed me.

When I pulled back I cocked my head, slightly, trying not to grin and cry at the same time. "You jumped on that damn grenade, didn't you?"

He threw his head back and laughed. "Of course I did. I couldn't let your sacrifice be bigger than mine, now could I?"

I huffed out a breath, irritated that he'd joke about something like that. "But what about the others? The rest of the universe?"

"Saved. We won."

I quickly absorbed the full meaning of those words. "I guess we did."

We turned and began to walk. Together.

.

 _finis_


End file.
